ePortfolios Rising

Stephen Downes recently wrote an article in the Europortfolio newsletter contextualizing ePortfolios today. I was taken by the quote below because it locates ePortfolios in a discourse of late dominated by MOOCs and the flipped classroom.

“In recent years discussion of ePortfolios has been eclipsed by the excitement around

massive open online courses (MOOCs). I think this is a mistake. It is important to

encourage students to create and share their own work. That said, the focus on

taking many courses from multiple providers makes it difficult to reply on a single

provider’s ePortfolio service. Increasingly, students will have to manage the hosting

In my role as an educational developer at UBC, I have witnessed the meteoric rise of MOOCs, Flexible Learning and the flipped classrooms and as interest builds in these areas, I see the continued value of ePortfolios in learning, and assessment. With the increasing distribution of learning we need approaches to enable us to see students as whole learners and share/celebrate the creative products that they develop.

I agree with Downes when he notes that it becomes difficult to rely on a single service provider to support the diverse ePortfolio needs in an institution. I am excited by the focus by some institutions such as UBC on a diverse and distributed support model for different ePortfolios tools and initiatives such as University of Mary Washington “A Domain of One’s Own” provides a model that moves us towards more learner-centred and holistic ePortfolios.

About Lucas Wright

I work as a learning technology specialist in the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at the University of British Columbia
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